The invention relates to the design of a safe having a door which can be locked by means of a permutation lock.
Safes are known whose door bolts are operated by means of a key-activated lock. Such safes are disadvantageous when they are used by a number of different people (e.g., in hotels, swimming pools, sport facilities) because in each case it is necessary to pass on the key to the next user. Handing over the key always involves the risk that the previous user may have made himself a copy of the key.
On the other hand, it is advantageous when a safe which is to be used by a number of different people is equipped with a permutation lock because, compared with key-activated locks, it is not necessary to hand over the key to the next user. It is however disadvantageous that anybody can use the safe free of charge because the person is not required to pick up a key for which the person must pay a rental fee.
It is a known feature of permutation locks that their key code can be adjusted from inside (e.g., the combination on a permutation lock fitted to a briefcase can be reset from inside the briefcase). This is disadvantageous in the case of safes which are constantly being used by different people because once the safe has been closed the newly set key code is no longer accessible for the user to note it down, for example, before the combination is manually scrambled. It would make very little sense to use such locks for example on hotel safes because guests would be frequently reporting to the reception desk asking for assistance in opening the safes because they had forgotten the key code which they had set.